PONTIAC >> Oakland County Water Resources Commission officials Wednesday broke ground on an $18.5 million sewage diversion project that will allow 13 communities to begin channeling wastewater to the city’s treatment facility instead of Detroit.

County and city officials kicked off construction for the Perry Street Diversion Project at Galloway Lake Park, located at 1498 N. Perry Street — an idea seven years in the making that will save Oakland County residents around $1 million a year when completed, county officials said.

“This is going divert flow from the Clinton-Oakland (communities) to the plant,” Water Resources Commissioner Jim Nash said at the podium. “It’ll save the communities a significant amount of money over time, and it will help the City of Pontiac ... It’ll bring in some income and let them use their wastewater facility at capacity instead of less than half capacity.

“So it’s going to be a benefit for this community and for the communities that are feeding it.”

The Perry Street Diversion Project will address sewer capacity issues in the Clinton-Oakland Sewage Disposal System, which is made up of 13 northeast Oakland County communities. It will include a 36-inch pipeline and pump station on Perry Street that, when complete, will divert around 30 percent of the Clinton-Oakland Interceptor’s total sewage flow to wastewater treatment facilities in Pontiac.

The project is set to last about 14 months and will be financed by the Water Resources Commission and future user rates.

The project also will open up employment opportunities in Pontiac as construction gets underway, said Sonia Beshay, of project contractor Sorenson Gross Construction.

“This will improve the economy and help people find more work,” Beshay said. “There will be a crew of carpenters and concrete finishers and at least 20 laborers working on this job site.”

Currently, the communities serviced by the Clinton-Oakland Interceptor send 100 percent of the flow 30 miles south to the Detroit Water and Sewage Department to be treated, said Suzanne Coffey, manager for the Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner.

During the financial planning stages this summer, the county planned to issue bonds to fund the project, and each community in the system was being asked to pledge its full faith and credit to repay the bonds.

The initial estimate for the project was more than $24 million.

After 11 communities signed contracts, the process was stalled when Rochester City Council members voiced concerns with the project and did not sign.

But it was fortuitous, said Coffey, because after the county’s bid’s for the price of the project came back lower than what was expected, the bond sale was no longer needed.

Moving forward, drainage rates for residents won’t rise as steeply as they would’ve without the project, but no other major changes will be felt by the public, Coffey explained.

“It’s a reduction in cost, and we’ll be utilizing a local, regional asset,” she said. “I think of it like a factory that uses clean wastewater, and just isn’t at its production capacity, and it should be ... so we’ll make the best use of the assets on the ground for the betterment of the people.”

When it’s fully operational, revenue from the Perry Street Diversion project is expected to help pay back $55 million in bonds the county floated to Pontiac last year in a deal that transferred ownership of the city’s wastewater operations to a standalone public corporation managed by the county. The city used the bond money to pay off most of its debt.

Pontiac has two wastewater plants: a primary plant on Opdyke Road and a second facility on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, both of which discharge their treated waste into the Clinton River.